


Temptation

by Shadowmun



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:28:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26969752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowmun/pseuds/Shadowmun
Summary: Meeting of Booker and Dr. Kozak post-movie
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Temptation

**Author's Note:**

> Quite angsty, not exactly a happy end.  
> No native, no betaread.  
> constructive criticism specifically wanted.

We sat at the table, opposite to each other, the life of the bar bustling around us, but not touching us at all. As if we were unable to hear the music, as if people were unable to notice us at all. For once, I felt as timeless, as unbearably sad and lost as him. Silently I watched as he poured his second glass of cognac. Silently he watched me declining his offer to fill mine. “So…”, I finally uttered. “Thanks for meeting up with me.”

With a shrug and a sip from his glass, he sighed: “It’s not like I have yet decided, if I kill you afterwards… It’s probably up to you…” I took it in strange calm. It had been months since my last encounter with him, them… They had tried to track me down, tried to end me, of that, I was sure. And yet… It turned out that it would have been easier to just let them. Out of the shelter of Merrick’s little lab, the world was a cruel place and the hyenas were already at my heel, trying to get me even more than they did, trying to do things to me that made a simple death preferable.

Some would just want me to go on with my research… to what ends ever… some would take me and turn me upside down for my knowledge and discard me afterwards. And some would turn me into a striking example, what could happen, if you spilled the beans. Talked about things, people didn’t have to know.

The noble price, money… all my dreams had turned to ashes, yet the things I had done for them, came crashing back on me every fucking night. - “You think, I am going to far? That I am unethical?” “Immoral, I would say.” - Seemed to me, my conscience was much more of a bitch, once I couldn’t excuse myself with the greater good anymore. The Italian told me I would never be able to produce results… He had been so right, though for all the wrong reasons… And now, here we were, with the single, simple thing, I had achieved.

“I have something for you, Mr. Booker.” I placed the little box with the capsule in front of me and pushed it towards him. “I am not sure, if it works, but it might… for a time… So… If you take it, be sure to… well, get to the deed immediately.”

He studied my face impassively and did not move. “Why.”

Not even a question. “I owed it. I owed you the try. And… It’s not like there is anything else to do with it.” Unsurprisingly he wasn’t convinced, so I went on: “Call it a final… experiment on behalf of my curiosity.”

The smile he gave me was everything but happy. With one gulp, he emptied the glass and poured another. “Fine. Come.”

The final glass stayed on the table, until he almost left the table, then remembered it, like an afterthought and emptied it, too. The tired familiarity of the whole process weighed down on me, like the constant urge to look over my shoulder, like the inner repeat of every single moment in the lab, like… eternity and the last seconds of one’s life collapsed into a single feeling. I felt just as lost as him, only held on to dignity by the fingernails, tumbling into the abyss just like he did, although I might have come from a different direction.

The jerk on my jacket snapped my out of my gloomy thoughts, not exactly hostile, only impatient. It was cold outside, and I was thankful, the way to his rundown apartment was short, though apart from getting out of the constant drizzle of rain and pull of wind, it was barely an improvement.

There was obviously no heating, the wallpaper was torn and the only decoration on the single table, no chairs attached, was a bunch of empty bottles. There was a stained mattress in the corner, which I preferred not to examine to closely and a sink. The whole thing a summary of poverty or aimlessness, in his case probably the latter.

Lacking any possibility to sit down, I leaned against the wall close to the door, not quite sure, if I really wanted to touch it. He wasn’t so picky. He just sat down on the mattress, shoulders hunched and opened the little box, studying the capsule intensely.

“What will happen?”, he finally managed.

“I don’t really know…”, I admitted. “It is supposed to stop the healing. It… might not work at all, or go terribly wrong… you might come back anyways… Or just… die in agony.”

It didn’t faze him. Not really. He looked at his possible exit, like a junkie on turkey, a junkie, about to quit, but oh, so tempted. His hands were very calm, when he removed the capsule. Mine shook. Slowly, he turned it, watched it from each possible angle, while I couldn’t take my eyes of him, even though me eyes started to water, my neck would hurt.

Eventually, finally, he put it between his lips, swallowed it with a decent swing from a bottle placed conveniently close. I gulped down with him, bit my lip, until I could taste my own blood, while he reached for something behind the mattress. A weapon, a gun.

With growing tension, hesitation even, he put it to his temple, for the first time unsure to follow through. I just watched, neither discouraging, nor urging him on. My hands balled into fists, the nails digging deeply into my own skin. When the shot ringed, he fell like a puppet, whose strings were cut. Blood was sprinkled on the wall, blood seeped into the mattress. With the tension released, I fell too, right on my knees, shivering from cold and devastation and exhaustion. On hands and knees, I crawled towards him, somehow still not beyond carefully avoiding getting blood on my clothes… as if it mattered. I waited. There was no sign of repair, of skin and bone knitting together. Just a body… just a cadaver. I wouldn’t be alone in death.

With just my fingertips I removed the weapon from his grasp. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, now, that he was dead. I handed it gingerly, unsure, yet with determination. I wouldn’t shoot my temple; I didn’t want to look like that… ruin. I put it below my jaw, pointing slightly backwards so my face would be untouched…

\----

There is a voice mail on the burner phone. Bookers voice, breathless yet somewhat released. “I have Dr. Kozak’s body over here… If you want to see…”


End file.
